Healthcare 2030
Health care as a whole progresses and it will continue to. Going back to the times of Hippocrates (a medical scientist) in ancient Greece, even further back to the ancients in Egypt, their methods for managing epilepsy is far from the methods utilized today, nevertheless it is the same epilepsy that manifests in modern day.
What would health care look like 20 years from now? Let us initially break this question down into three parts, respectively: The profession, the delivery method and finally the technological aspect.
The Profession: There would be major streamlining, thus, allowing non-doctors (nurses etc) to perform more specialized duties while freeing up doctors for the most vital aspects of healthcare. As new discoveries are made, doctors themselves would be further specialized, specializing more on the individual disease and its genetic causes; distinguish from a doctor today that can diagnose almost any type of disease with little reference to genetics.
Delivery Method: The needle will become obsolete, but that’s more in the distant future, the stethoscope will finally be retired or replaced with a modernized version. By the year 2030, pills would have become smaller and more effective, in that they have now been designed to deliver the chemicals to specific spots only.
Technological Aspect: Genetics would have revealed most of its inner secrets. Medicine will shift towards ‘Attacking the disease by understanding the genetics behind it.’ No longer will the dentist utilize fillings or other materials because the genetic-engineers would have figured out how to stimulate the relevant genes so one could re-grow and replace a missing tooth, may be not by 2030, however not to far in the distant future. By 2030, majority of the most severe diseases would be curable or preventable, as noted “Medicine will have turned what were once debilitating conditions, including Alzheimer’s, into ailments as treatable as seasonal allergies.”*(Reginald M. Ballantyne III). Let us add to this list; all genetic diseases, since progress is continually being made within the genetics branch of medicine. By 2030 one would not need a donor for a transplant, due to the insights and again the continual progress of genetics. One thing that is unclear however is health care insurance. Would it cost more or less? By 2030 we would have known one thing for certain though, whether the recently signed health care bill really worked.
*Phoenix Business Journal (2006, January, 13) Health care 2030: Future changes will be ‘stunning.’ Retrieved October 3, 2010, from http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/01/16/focus2.html?jst=s_cn_hl
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I hope veterinarians will get to use some of the marvelous new procedures on the animals. Of course only pets of rich people will get that elective care. I love animals and hate the way some cruel people treat them. I hope some attention is paid to animal cruelty in the future. We have to evolve as a people and bring more kindness into the world. As the most helpless of us are treated, that is how to judge a society.
I wanted to spend a miutne to thank you for this.
Hey dude, I never thought about growing a new tooth. I thought you were talkin about implanted teeth. We got that now if anyone can afford the big bucks. But it’ll be great to grow organs and stuff. One problem. If everyone lives longer, we’re gonna overpopulate. I’m just sayin.
I am very curious too about how it will be for us in the need of medical treatment in 2030. By then, I’ll be old enough to worry about how much it will cost and how much it will hurt. Do we expect them to invent better pain meds? I hope so. Somehow the politicians will still be telling the scientists and doctors what to do, who to do it to and how to do it. That never changes and it won’t change by 2030. It will be great if teeth can be grown and no one has to get dentures. Polident, you’re going down. haha.
These innovations sound pretty much out of science fiction. I wish I’d be around to enjoy growing new white teeth for one thing. But maybe my kids will get something out of all the high taxes they’ll be paying. I’m glad the poor will get good health care still. But the medical poor group will be the lower middle class with high taxes and still have to buy the high cost insurance. The rich will float softly through life with great medical care and the upper middle class will do well also. But they will have to pay more taxes and will gripe about helping the poor just like they do now. The circle of life will continue as it always has. If socialism is ever really in play, someone will get mad and work to change it back to capitalism.
Will there be fewer dentists and more geneticists? I think there will be more doctors working in the lab inventing more genetic marvels but the doctors will still talk to a patient for 5 minutes. I wonder how much will be surgery by robot instead of just a few procedures they do now? Lasik eye surgery is to me, a modern marvel and things like that will they be done for everybody or just the rich people? Elective surgery is planned to be harder to get and take longer to get the procedures done.
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